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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2018 AT 3 PM EMERSON STRING QUARTET GUEST CELLIST DAVID FINCKEL BUY TICKETS DAVID FINCKEL, CELLO “His playing has great warmth and expressiveness coupled with a noble, aristocratic restraint.” — Strings Magazine EMERSON STRING QUARTET “With musicians like this there must be some hope for humanity.” — The Times (London) FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS The venerable ensemble will return to Parlance Chamber Concerts with their erstwhile colleague for a festive reunion performance of Schubert’s cherished Cello Quintet. PROGRAM George Walker Lyric for Strings Program Notes Dmitri Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 Program Notes Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings Program Notes Franz Schubert String Quintet in C, D. 956 Program Notes Watch Michael Parloff’s Lecture about Shostakovich’s 8th String Quartet at Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society:

RAYMOND MENARD, RECITER Raymond Menard is a New York based theater professional. In 1987 he joined the stage management staff of the Metropolitan Opera Association and now holds the title of Production Stage Manager. Prior to joining the Met, he was Staff Stage Director and Artistic Administrator for the New York City Opera. While at NYCO, he was honored with the Julius Rudel Award in recognition of his musical and administrative skills. In addition to his behind the scenes work, Ray has appeared onstage as Pasha Selim in Mozart’s ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO for Opera New Jersey and as King Bobeche in the Bronx Opera production of Offenbach’s BLUEBEARD. He is a frequent participant in the Met Live in HD and Sirius radio broadcasts. Ray studied music at the New England Conservatory of Music and theater at the PrattInstitute. Since 2010 he has served on the faculty of the Graduate School of the Arts of Columbia University. A New Jersey native, Ray makes his home in Boonton Township with his wife, Laura, and daughters, Amity and Isobel.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2016 AT 3 PM Jason Vieaux, guitar; Escher String Quartet BUY TICKETS ESCHER STRING QUARTET “The Escher players seemed to make time stand still, effortlessly distilling the essence of this introspective music with expressive warmth and a natural confiding intimacy.” — Chicago Classical Review JASON VIEAUX, GUITAR “…perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” – NPR FEATURING ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE BUY TICKETS Our gala opener on September 25 will have you dancing in the aisles. Grammy Award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux will collaborate with the stellar Escher String Quartet in an exuberant international mix. The afternoon will journey from Hugo Wolf ’s buoyant Italian Serenade to Luigi Boccherini ’s sizzling Fandango , reaching a toe-tapping climax with Alan Jay Kernis ’s irrepressible 100 Greatest Dance Hits for Guitar and String Quartet . PROGRAM Hugo Wolf Italian Serenade for string quartet Program Notes Antonio Vivaldi Guitar Concerto in D, RV 93 Program Notes Luigi Boccherini Quintet in D for guitar and string Program Notes Johann Sebastian Bach Suite in E minor, BWV 996 for solo guitar Program Notes Francisco Tárrega Capricho árabe for solo guitar Program Notes Alan Jay Kernis 100 Great Dance Hits for guitar and string quartet Program Notes Jason Vieaux performs Albéniz’s Sevilla: The Escher String Quartet performs Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet, Mvts 1 & 2:

STERLING ELLIOTT, CELLO Acclaimed for his stellar stage presence and joyous musicianship, cellist Sterling Elliott is a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient and the winner of the Senior Division of the 2019 National Sphinx Competition. Already in his young career, he has appeared with major orchestras such as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony and the Dallas Symphony, with noted conductors Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Thomas Wilkins, Jeffrey Kahane, Mei Ann Chen and others. In the 2024/2025 season Sterling Elliott debuts with the Atlanta Symphony, Reno Philharmonic, Columbus Symphony, Ann Arbor Symphony, Des Moines Symphony, Winston-Salem Symphony, and returns to the Wilmington Symphony. He joins the Madison Symphony for the Beethoven Triple Concerto with Gil and Orli Shaham and returns to Carnegie Hall with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s led by Louis Langree. As the YCAT–Music Masters Robey Artist with the London-based Young Classical Artists Trust he will Tour New Zealand in addition to appearances at Wigmore Hall, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Konzerthaus Berlin, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and others. This season he also begins his tenure as a BBC New Generation Artist, and a three-year residency in the Bowers Program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center appearing with CMLSC at Alice Tully Hall and on tour throughout the U.S. Sterling has a long history with the Sphinx Organization where he won the 2014 Junior Division Competition, becoming the first alumnus from the Sphinx Performance Academy to win the Sphinx Competition. Last season, Sterling received the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by the Sphinx Organization. Sterling is pursuing an Artist Diploma at the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Joel Krosnick and Clara Kim, following completion of his Master of Music and undergraduate degrees at Juilliard. He is an ambassador of the Young Strings of America, a string sponsorship operated by Shar Music. He performs on a 1741 Gennaro Gagliano cello on loan through the Robert F. Smith Fine String Patron Program, in partnership with the Sphinx Organization.

April 8, 2018: Danish String Quartet LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770–1827) String Quartet in C# minor, Op. 131 April 8, 2018: Danish String Quartet When Prince Nicholas Galitzin ordered “one, two, or three new quartets” from Beethoven in November 1822, he could hardly have realized that he was instigating a series of works by which all later generations would judge profundity. Beethoven had not forgotten the quartet medium in the twelve years since the F minor Quartet, op. 95, but the commission gave him the impetus to turn sketches into finished works. Nevertheless, he could not concentrate on quartet writing until after completing the Missa solemnis , the Diabelli Variations, and the Ninth Symphony, so the project did not begin in earnest until mid-1824. After composing the B-flat major Quartet, the third of Galitzin’s commission, Beethoven continued writing quartets—not for the prince, who never completed payment for the first three, but out of the inner necessity for expression. Thus he added the C-sharp minor Quartet, op. 131, in seven movements in 1825–26, followed by the F major, arriving at the five works known as the “late quartets.” It should be noted that, too late for Beethoven himself but in the proper spirit, a son of Galitzin paid with interest what was owed on his father’s three quartets into the Beethoven estate. In May 1826 Beethoven offered the C-sharp minor Quartet to Schott for publication, receiving much more than he was to have received for each of the three “Galitzin” Quartets, but he did not live to see it in print. Nor did he witness a performance, which first took place publicly in 1835. The work did circulate in private performances, however, and it is fascinating to know that Schubert’s dying wish to hear the Quartet came to pass on November 14, 1828, just five days before the younger composer died. The C-sharp minor Quartet abounds with original features and an otherworldliness that so aptly illustrate the private world of Beethoven’s late period. We have only to listen to the opening notes of the slow fugue that opens the work—a startlingly novel beginning—to realize that we are the privileged eavesdroppers to a bared musical soul. The brooding, contemplative mood immediately sets the movement apart from more customary brisk-paced fugues, and suggests a link with the C-sharp minor Fugue of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier , which Beethoven had known since his youth. He takes his subject matter through numerous permutations and a wide range of keys, so that when he returns to the home key we experience a sense of recapitulation. Just prior comes a passage of ethereal beauty, in which the transparent texture highlights the two entwined violins followed by a duet between the viola and cello. Beethoven planned for the entire Quartet to be played without pause, though he was induced by the publisher to put in “numbers,” which correspond to what have traditionally been called its seven movements. Many, however, have commented on the fact that some of these “movements” might better be viewed as introductions or transitions to what follows, so that the first movement serves as a very extended introduction to the second movement, the very brief “No. 3” makes a transition to the Andante variation, and following the scherzo, “No. 6” serves as the slow introduction to the finale. Thus we find a highly original, expanded conception of the traditional four-movement quartet scheme. “No. 2” opens in a hush that is both gentle and merry, as if emerging from the shadow of the fugue. Here Beethoven turns to sonata style if not to form, since the movement contains no development section, and the mood is dancelike, much as one would find in a scherzo. Through a dramatic octave unison passage he brings about a brief but forceful climax that he immediately breaks into closing fragments. These impart little finality, however, and “No. 3,” like an opera recitative, prepares the next movement. The central Andante movement consists of a simple lyrical theme and six variations that show an amazing array of textures. Beethoven’s extended coda begins like a seventh variation, but then rhapsodizes, trills, and recalls the main theme in innocent guise, all leading to a dramatic flourish that brings on the subdued conclusion. The Presto scherzo begins impishly with the cello issuing a little invitation, only to be met with complete silence before the movement takes off. Beethoven’s two contrasting trio sections begin with playful two-note interchanges to which he adds a theme—marked piacevole (pleasing or amiable)—that is clearly related to the theme of the scherzo. He even begins his trio a third time—a joke he had also made in his Fourth and Seventh Symphonies—but abruptly shifts into an amazing coda that reduces trio elements to fragments before the scherzo theme gradually takes over. Even this return of the main theme throws us momentarily off guard because Beethoven asks for it to be played sul ponticello (on the bridge), producing a glassy, almost eerie sound. He exits this novel effect with a quick push to fortissimo (very loud) to end the movement. The three somber notes that open the relatively brief Adagio plunge us back into the realm of tragedy, here played out in poignant melancholy before erupting in the outcry of the tempestuous finale. After a forceful chord, the finale alternates pregnant pauses with angry unison statements, then takes off at an energetic gallop. Though Beethoven introduces moments of quiet into the first theme area, he saves his main contrast for the second theme, which first makes a long descent, then leaps rapturously to three repeated notes. His development section introduces a new long-note foil for the galloping motive, and makes much of a fragment of the opening unison idea and the scalar descent from the second theme. Following a murmur that grows ever more intense, the recapitulation bursts on the scene with a number of ingenious alterations, chief among which is the expressive return of the second theme in a key far removed from the original. Beethoven’s full-length coda, as in many of his late works, takes us on yet another developmental journey, during which we hear the astounding use of the long notes from the development in powerful octaves. Though Beethoven turns to the major mode of the home key toward the very end, we find little of the victory such a turn signaled in earlier works—the foregoing sense of tragedy in this Quartet cannot be dispelled. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

CONNIE SHIH, PIANO The Canadian pianist, Connie Shih, is repeatedly considered to be one of Canada’s most outstanding artists. In 1993 she was awarded the Sylva Gelber Award for most outstanding classical artist under age 30. At the age of nine, she made her orchestral debut with Mendelssohn's first Piano Concerto with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. At the age of 12, she was the youngest ever protégé of Gyorgy Sebok, and then continued her studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Claude Frank, himself a protégé of Arthur Schnabel. Later studies were undertaken with Fou Tsong in Europe. As soloist, she has appeared extensively with orchestras throughout Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe. In a solo recital setting, she has made countless appearances in Canada, the U.S., Iceland, England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Japan and China. Connie has given chamber music performances with many world-renowned musicians. To critical acclaim, she appears regularly in recital with cellist Steven Isserlis. Including chamber music appearances at the Wigmore and Carnegie Halls, she performs at the prestigious Bath Music Festival, Aldeburgh, Cheltenham, Weill Hall (N.Y.), and at the Kronberg Festival. Her collaborations have included Maxim Vengerov, Tabea Zimmerman, and Isabelle Faust. Connie regularly tours North America and Europe with Steven Isserlis, and includes a tour of Asia with Joshua Bell. In addition she appears at concert venues across Germany with the cellist Manuel Fischer-Dieskau with whom she recorded the first-ever CD of the Sonatas for piano and cello by Carl Reinecke and the complete Beethoven sonatas. Her CD with Steven Isserlis on the BIS label was recently released. Connie's performances are frequently broadcast via television and radio on CBC (Canada), BBC (U.K.), SWR, NDR, and WDR (Germany) as well as on other various television and radio stations in North America and Europe. She is on faculty at the Casalmaggiore Festival in Italy.

February 12, 2023 – Gloria Chien, piano, Benjamin Beilman and Alexi Kenney, violins, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola, Mihai Marica, cello, Yoobin Son, flute, Pascual Martinez-Forteza JOHANN STRAUSS (1804–1849) Emperor Waltz (arr. Schoenberg) February 12, 2023 – Gloria Chien, piano, Benjamin Beilman and Alexi Kenney, violins, Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, viola, Mihai Marica, cello, Yoobin Son, flute, Pascual Martinez-Forteza On November 23, 1918, in Vienna, Schoenberg founded the Society for Private Musical Performances. For slightly more than three seasons, the Society presented new works in thoroughly prepared performances for an audience of card-carrying members, many of them his friends and students. Critics were not allowed, nor applause or expressions of disapproval. The repertoire naturally included some of his own works, though he refrained from programming any of them until the second season. The composers whose works were performed most frequently were Max Reger (34 works) and Claude Debussy (26). Other composers who figured prominently were Berg, Webern, Bartók, Ravel, Scriabin, Mahler, Stravinsky, R. Strauss, Busoni, Szymanowski, Hauer, Zemlinsky, and Suk. Orchestral works had to be transcribed for performing forces that the Society could manage—two- or four-hand piano, or chamber orchestra consisting of piano, harmonium, flute, clarinet, string quartet, and, occasionally bass, percussion, or other added instruments. Though Schoenberg sometimes assigned the work of transcribing to his students, he made many of the arrangements himself. The Society was losing money, and so on May 27, 1921, Schoenberg and his colleagues presented a benefit concert with new arrangements of four Strauss waltzes—among them the Emperor Waltzes—followed by an auction of the scores. The program listed the following performers: Eduard Steuermann, piano; Alban Berg, harmonium; Rudolf Kolisch and Arnold Schoenberg, violins 1, Karl Rankl, violin 2; Othmar Steinbauer, viola; and Anton Webern, cello. Unfortunately, the Society had to fold that December, but in its three years the Society had presented 154 works, some with multiple performances, in 117 concerts! To turn to the original composer of the Emperor Waltzes, Johann Strauss II was originally discouraged in a musical career by his father who ran a celebrated dance orchestra in Vienna. Eventually, however, it was Johann Strauss II who achieved international recognition as “the waltz king.” In 1888 he was inspired to write two different compositions in his capacity as “imperial court ball music director” for the jubilee celebrating Franz-Joseph’s fortieth anniversary as emperor. The first, the Emperor’s Jubilee Waltzes, op. 434, is rarely heard today, while the Emperor Waltzes, op. 437, has proved to be one of Strauss’s most enduring and popular works. Most of Strauss’s great waltzes stem from the 1860s, including his most well-known On the Beautiful Blue Danube. The present Emperor Waltzes as well as the Voices of Spring, however, were written two decades later when he was concentrating more on operettas than independent dances pieces. He did include waltz sequences in his operettas, of which Die Fledermaus (The Bat) and The Gypsy Baron achieved the greatest success and renown. The set of Emperor Waltzes finds itself equally at home in the concert hall as in the dance hall. The work is introduced by a quiet march—a bit Mozartean in style, orchestration, and trills—in which Strauss previews the theme of the first waltz and builds an impressive climax that subsides in a cello solo. The waltz proper is a tender, lilting affair, leading off a string of four charming waltzes. The third is said to recall Franz-Joseph’s military career in its second half, and the last constitutes a ländler (Austrian folk dance in triple meter, precursor to the waltz). The lengthy coda, which again highlights the solo cello, recalls and develops themes from the first and third waltzes. The final reminiscence of the first theme is tinged with an elegant nostalgia before the final flourish. © Michael Parloff Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 11, 2018: Benjamin Beilman, Violin; Orion Weiss, piano BÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945) Violin Sonata No. 2, BB 85 (Sz. 76) March 11, 2018: Benjamin Beilman, Violin; Orion Weiss, piano Bartók wrote his two sonatas for violin and piano in 1921 and 1922 for violinist Jelly d’Arányi, with whom he played them in London, the first in 1922 and the second in 1923. The composer especially like performing the Second Sonata, not only with d’Arányi but with Imre Waldbauer, József Szigeti, and Zoltán Székely. Along with The Miraculous Mandarin and the First Piano Concerto, the violin sonatas are products of Bartók’s “expressionist” period, when he came closest to the ideals of the Second Viennese School of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. Lecturing in America in 1927–28 Bartók said: “There was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.” The composer himself described the First Violin Sonata as “in C-sharp minor” and the Second as “in C major,” but the tonality is extremely clouded in both. In the Second Sonata a pivotal relationship proves to be that of a tritone from F-sharp to C. Further, in both he refrains from the traditional sharing or imitation of materials between the two instruments, which makes these two works unlike any other works in the genre. In the Second Sonata in particular Bartók also avoids the conventional form of a sonata, employing instead a condensed two-movement form related to the model of traditional Hungarian verbunkos (recruiting music) consisting of a slow section (lassù ) and a fast section (friss ). The first movement adopts a free, declamatory style with elaborate ornamentation and frequent pushing and pulling of the tempo typical of the slow (lassù ) section, albeit in a more dissonant style. Bartók hasn’t completely distanced himself from Classic forms here, drawing on a kind of sonatina structure—that is, exposition and recapitulation with no development—but his recapitulation varies the four sections of his exposition themes significantly and the overall effect sounds freely rhapsodic rather than betraying its careful organization. The opening theme, which Bartók recalls not only at the opening of the recapitulation but twice in the coda, also plays a unifying role in the second movement. A technique that comes into play in the first movement, though less than in the first movement of the First Sonata, is the placing of successive melody notes in different registers (octave displacement), a common technique in twelve-tone composition. This greatly alters, for example, the sound of the return of the third section in the recapitulation. Bartók in his Hungarian Folk Music suggests a folk equivalent to this “high art” technique: Hungarian peasants do not devote much care to selecting a suitable pitch, but they simplify difficulties in proportion as they occur: whenever a note is too high or two low for them, they transpose it by an octave, regardless of design and rhythmic conditions. This they will do ad libitum, perhaps several times in the course of one tune. Hence at times peculiar leaps of a seventh occur. . . . In the course of time this practice has become so usual that many peasants resort to changes of octaves without being driven by need. The connected second movement exhibits a lively dance character, like the friss section of verbunkos style, and unfolds in a form somewhat like a rondo in which the “refrain” returns in varied guises. Bartók ingeniously links his two movements by recalling themes from the first movement in the intervening episodes and by having the violin return to the first movement’s opening theme at the climax near the end. The piece ends with an atmospheric fade to a somewhat surprising but radiant C major chord. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Toccata in D, BMV 912 March 19, 2023 – Rachel Naomi Kudo, piano Bach composed seven manualiter toccatas, BWV 910–916, whose designation toccata refers to pieces that display a keyboardist’s dexterity and manualiter means “hands only” as opposed to those requiring pedals. Therefore these pieces were to be played on a keyboard instrument other than organ—such as the harpsichord in the eighteenth century. Bach never collected these toccatas under a single title, but they represent the culmination of the genre, begun in the sixteenth century and in Bach’s case likely influenced by early Baroque German models comprised of several distinct contrasting sections. Precise dating has proved impossible, but scholars typically designate a range of “?before 1708” to “before 1714,” which places them before or during his tenure at the court of Weimar. The date often given for the D major Toccata, BWV 912, is “before 1710,” with an early version possibly dating from c. 1707. That could have been during Bach’s year in Mühlhausen, June 1707–June 1708, or in Arnstadt where he was organist from 1703 to 1707. In June 1708 Bach took up the post of court organist at Weimar, where Duke Wilhelm Ernst is said to have greatly enjoyed Bach’s playing, so it is likely that Bach himself performed his toccatas for his employer. It is equally possible that they could have been played by one or more of his talented students, but there is no specific evidence that he intended them for teaching, as he did with other works (mentioned above in connection with the French Suites). The D major Toccata, like the other six, closes with a fugue and like all but one (G major, BWV 916) opens with an improvisatory prelude. This brief lively opening is striking for its similarity to the D major organ Prelude and Fugue, BWV 532, which may date from around the same time, especially as to its to ascending scales, which Bach extends locally and employs in dramatic descents in the extended Adagio transition to the first fugue. Prior to that, however, the prelude brings on a captivating Allegro that unfolds with rondo-like recurring passages. Modulatory excursions into the minor mode and similar journeys in the ensuing recitative-like Adagio prepare for the first fugue in F-sharp minor. This fugue offers a somewhat introspective exploration of that key with three expositions of the simultaneous subject/countersubject pair, seamlessly connected by two brief episodes. Following another dramatic declamatory transition, the final fugue gallops along in 6/16 meter much like a perpetual-motion gigue until its final arresting bars. For the C minor Toccata, BWV 911, scholars suggest a date of “before 1714,” which was the year Bach added the title and rank of Konzertmeister to the post of court organist that he had begun at Weimar in 1708. Thus its earliest performers were likely the same as for the D major Toccata above and the other manualiter toccatas, that is, Bach himself or possibly his sons or students. The C minor Toccata begins with an improvisatory, ornate-style introduction, followed by a relatively short Adagio, maintaining a lamenting mood. The main portion of the piece consists of a massive fugue, interrupted by a recitative-like passage, after which Bach introduces a second subject and launches into a double fugue (treatment of his two subjects in contrapuntal combination). A majestic adagio passage brings Bach’s mighty work to a close. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

ABRAHAM APPLEMAN, VIOLA Abraham Appleman was born in Yokohama, Japan. He began his studies on the violin and piano at the age of four, soon after his family moved to the Boston area. His continued studies there led to his debut, at age fifteen, performing Max Bruch’s G minor Violin Concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Since then, Mr. Appleman has had a multifaceted career, performing in Asia, Europe, and the Americas as a soloist, concertmaster, and chamber musician. He is a founding member of the chamber ensemble Voce Intimae and has served as concertmaster of the Colorado Music Festival and the Atlantic Classical Orchestra in Florida. In New York, Mr. Appleman performs regularly in the first violin section of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. As one of the foremost violinists in the recording industry, he can be heard as a soloist on numerous CDs and motion picture soundtracks. During the summer season, Mr. Appleman is regularly invited to perform with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the Tanglewood Music Festival.

October 14, 2018: Garrick Ohlsson, piano JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Eight Pieces, Op. 76 October 14, 2018: Garrick Ohlsson, piano During his stay in the lovely village of Pörtschach in the summer of 1879, Brahms worked diligently on his Violin Concerto, but he also returned to composing piano pieces, resulting in the Klavierstücke , op. 76. He had produced no piano works for public consumption in fifteen years, but had not abandoned his principal instrument completely as seen by the first of these pieces, which he had originally presented to Clara Schumann as a birthday present in 1871. Having permanently left behind the monumental sonatas and variation sets of his earlier period, he took up the thread of “miniatures,” begun with the Opus 10 Ballades and which would culminate in the late great piano pieces, opp. 116–119. He found such shorter pieces perfect for exploring a myriad of subtle textures and nuances of mood. And, as it turns out, he had not abandoned the variation techniques that fascinated him at all periods of his life—he had simply refined them. The eight Klavierstücke , op. 76, are divided into two main types: the faster, more extroverted Capriccios—Nos. 1, 2, 5, and 8—and the slower, more introspective Intermezzos—Nos. 3, 4, 6, and 7. Brahms invented such a variety of characters within each type, however, that the designations remain only loose categorizations. The first Capriccio, in F-sharp minor, and the second, in B minor, for example, could hardly be more different. The first is a swirling, turbulent piece, whereas the famous second Capriccio presents a lighthearted, sometimes impish demeanor. Brahms’s friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg, from whom he frequently solicited opinions on his music, said the F-sharp minor Capriccio was her favorite, but she also loved playing the second. Brahms employed slightly different forms for each of the eight pieces. They all, however, have to do with the alternation of two main sections and with the ingenious variation of a section when it returns. The first Capriccio contrasts the opening theme of yearning, wide-ranging figures with one in which a four-note figure recurs in many guises. In No. 2 the two basic themes alternate minor and major, but both are playful with enlivening grace notes and off-beat accents. The first of the Intermezzos, No. 3 in A-flat major, gives the impression of a music box in its first and third sections by means of high range and staccato accompaniment; these sections alternate with more lush music that hints at Chopin. The Intermezzo in B-flat major, No. 4, presents an intricate texture somewhat reminiscent of Schumann, with each voice maintaining its own rhythmic pattern. Here Brahms offers a complete miniature sonata form. The powerful Capriccio in C-sharp minor, No. 5, displays one of Brahms’s favorite rhythmic devices—the simultaneous use of 6/8 and 3/4 meter. The wonderful tension this creates is abetted by intense chromaticism. The second theme begins in a waiting pattern of repeated octaves, then bursts out in lively figuration. The Intermezzo in A major, No. 6, again brings Schumann to mind with its many-layered texture; it too juxtaposes rhythmic patterns of twos and threes. The most striking feature of No. 7, the A minor Capriccio, is the chordal theme that frames the piece. The second section is notable for its insistent return to one note (G-sharp). The set closes with a Capriccio of complex moods and textures—No. 8 in C major, which begins with a section of flowing eighth-note figuration, within which tied notes provide slight emphasis. The second, more chordal idea takes intriguing harmonic expeditions. Just when it seems the piece might conclude contemplatively, the coda gathers momentum for a forceful finish. Plagued by self-doubt, Brahms asked Clara Schumann if he should omit No. 8 from the publication. We can be grateful that she told him it was a great favorite of hers, perhaps saving the piece from banishment. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

EMILY DAGGETT SMITH, VIOLIN A violinist praised as playing “gorgeously” and with “gracefulness and easy rapport” (The Boston Globe) Emily Daggett Smith is emerging as one of the most compelling artists of her generation. Her recital and chamber music performances have taken her across the United States, Europe, South America and Asia, and she has been described as playing with a “very beautiful tone” (The Gathering Note) and “irrepressible élan” (The Seattle Times). An avid chamber musician, Ms. Smith performs regularly at numerous festivals and series around the country such as the Concordia Chamber Ensemble, Festival Mozaic, Lenape Chamber Ensemble, Mainly Mozart Festival, Ravinia’s Steans Institute, and the Seattle Chamber Music Society. She has shared the stage with many renowned musicians including current and former members of the Cleveland, Emerson and Juilliard String Quartets, as well as pianists Claude Frank, Joseph Kalichstein, and Gilbert Kalish. Her performances have taken place at some of the world’s greatest halls including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Shanghai Grand Theatre and the Vienna Konzerthaus, and have been featured on PBS’s national broadcast Live from Lincoln Center, NPR’s From the Top, Classical King FM in Seattle and WWFM The Classical Network in New York and Pennsylvania. As a soloist, Ms. Smith made her New York concerto debut at the age of 21 in Alice Tully Hall, playing the Beethoven Violin Concerto with the Juilliard Orchestra and conductor Emmanuel Villaume. Since then she has performed concerti with many orchestras including Iris Orchestra, Festival Mozaic Orchestra, New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Classical Players. Growing up in the Boston area, she has also appeared as soloist with various orchestras in New England including a performance at the Hatch Shell in Boston as part of the Landmark Orchestra Series. As a concertmaster of the Juilliard Orchestra she has worked with many renowned conductors including Michael Tilson-Thomas, Leonard Slatkin and Nicholas McGegan.